The last blog post I put up was wordy and philosophical. This one will (hopefully!) be a bit more light and airy.
I’ve spent most of my time this week hacking through the last of the loose Evaniidae, keying them to genus, and putting them away (woo!).
I’ve also had the opportunity to start learning to use the microscope mounted camera – the system we use here has its quirks, but I’m slowly figuring them out. It is my hope to start tinkering with image stacking stuff to get better quality photos sometime within the next few days. I’ve included a number of the better photos I’ve taken in this post. You can find more on our flikr feed, along with other great shots taken by the folk at the Frost, here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/93467196@N02/.
Here are a few of the highlights from this week:
This Madagascan evaniid opened up an interesting can of worms: in the genus Zeuxevania the basal and first submarginal wing cells are combined into one tear-drop shaped vein; in Parevania the cells are separated by a vein. This specimen has one wing with the vein and one wing without the vein. What is it? Answer: I don’t know.
This female Zeuxevania caught my eye because of its particularly elongate petiole. This species probably preys on cockroaches which drag their oothecae behind them during germination. The long petiole helps it to inject its eggs into the side of the ootheca as it rides along.
This Evania was a rather striking orange color. Most evaniids fit the stereotype of small and completely black or brown, but there are exceptions ranging from white banded antennae and patches of shining silver setae to more exciting brick reds and tawny oranges.
I also ran into a number of non-evaniid wasps while working through the collection. Here are a few of the more interesting — at least to— me ones:
This specimen was one of a few chalcidids that got mixed in with a loan of Evaniidae. Its legs are just fantastic.
I’m unsure what this is, but it has an amusingly lumpy mesosoma and fabulously flabellate antennae.
Finally, I had the opportunity to go do some general collecting about the neighborhood this weekend and I’m happy to report that I picked up two pretty little weevils from Holmes Foster park:
These guys are each about 3mm in length, but that’s just the right size if you ask me: tiny insects are usually the coolest ones!
Andy Deans says
The one with flabellate antennae is a eucharitid (Chalcidoidea). They’re parasitoids of ants! Great weevils, by the way, and great post. We’ll have to tweak the camera, for sure, especially to capture the color of that awesome Evania species from Africa!